2. Spoken text: M. K. Ghandi, from Non-Violence in Peace and War and vocal text from the final scene of Satyagraha by Phillip Glass adapted from the Bhagavad-Gita by Constance De Jong, read by Mary Briggs

Program Notes

Integer
Music and the Collaborative Form

My music often
includes the use of integers to represent the number of sounds to be
played, as is the case with my piano pieces presented on this program. The
musical score is divided into sections or movements each containing a set
of integers and the name of a particular thing that relates to the subject
of the score (Alien, for example, contains the names of familiar robots and
‘creatures’ borrowed from popular culture). The integers are
derived from the names in the score (A=1, Z=26), and are read and
interpreted freely by the player. The player then has the option of
inserting, or not, short silences between musical segments. The various
sound groups based on the integers and separated by silences determine the
overall continuity and structure of the music.

We seldom
experience each day as a continuous, traceable pathway where one event
leads to another in an effortless progression; where transitions are
smoothly bridged and beginnings and endings are profound or magical.

More typically, we experience the world as a succession of short,
independent, apparently unrelated events, sometimes separated by periods of
inactivity.Our brains are continually streaming, filtering, and
consolidating sensory information, converting these events into discrete
experiences that help us to model reality.

I have structured
what I call collaborative music to represent this shape of human
experience, creating a variety of short, independent sound events that are
sometimes separated by one to several seconds of silence, while at other
times involve little or no transition from one event to the next.

The music is intended to provoke the listener to imagine events in the
world as a locality of discrete patterns, unique and independent, yet
occurring globally in a variety of forms, at different speeds, and at
different orders of magnitude and scale. The music also mimics
familiar processes in nature in which small independent elements become
organized into larger groups. Accumulation and timing of the short
independent sound events create an increasingly organic, diverse, and
complex musical form.

This music is not improvisational, but
collaborative. Strict constraints are built into the structure of the
music, while at the same time the player is invited to explore the broadest
possible freedom based on his or her conceptual instincts, expressive
vocabulary, and level of playing experience.